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Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Oscar season is prime time for movies about tortured geniuses. Earlier,
this season, we had The Theory of
Everything featuring the life story of Stephen Hawking; both are likely to
move on to award nominations.

In The Imitation Game, we have
Benedict Cumberbatch as World War II codebreaker Alan Turing, who is tasked
with breaking the Germans' code while hiding his sexuality from 1950s British
law.

It’s an amazing story. And it plays out nicely as a thriller.

Sherlock’s
Cumberbatch is a natural in this savant role and Kiera Knightley is in fine
form as his intellectual (and maybe too modern for this film) sidekick. Their
chemistry is strong and it propels the film.

Simply put: This season’s best
WWII film, and a highly-watchable thriller.

Award potential: Expect about seven nominations for this deserving
film ranging from Best Picture, Actor and Actress to Best Score.

Monday, December 29, 2014

Laura Hillenbrand’s 2010 best seller, Unbroken:A World War II
Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption, tells the amazing story of
Olympian Louis Zamperini who survived in a raft for 47 days after a near-fatal
plane crash in WWII-only to be caught by the Japanese Navy and sent to a
prisoner-of-war camp. It’s one of the most amazing stories of the past Century.

The film was directed by Angeline Jolie, written by screenwriters
Joel and Ethan Coen, edited by William
Goldenberg and scored by the great Alexandre Desplat. Sounds like the best
movie of the year, right?

It’s a good film. But amazingly it’s not great. Fans of the book won’t be
disappointed by the film’s scale or the dazzling air fight sequences; nor will they
be upset by the faithful-to-the-book storytelling. But the endurance story seems to plod
away at milestones without much feeling.

Some of the blame goes to the likeable but blank-faced Jack O’Connell who
plays “Louie.” In his quiet moments (lots of them), I never knew what he was
thinking about despite having read the biography.

More of the blame goes to an anticlimactic ending that skipped the
redemptive moments, the biggest heart of Zamperini’s biography. Unbroken simply tosses them out with
text at the end.

The rest of the blame goes to the choice to tell a broad story about a
big life by leaving out the small details that connect to why that life mattered to future
generations. Darn.

Simply put: Unbroken is good but not great. You will enjoy it, but it should have been excellent.
Bridge Over River Kwai remains our best
POW picture.

Award potential: I think the Oscars will like Unbroken
more than The Golden Globes and myself. Best
Picture is possible. Jolie for Best
Director would be a nod to women directors everywhere. Miyavi (the Bird) is
a distance but deserving choice for Best Supporting Actor. Best Screenplay is likely but the Coens share that category with
the original writers. There was an editor before Goldenberg as well.Best Costume, Production, Sound and Sound Mixing seem likely. Best Score is the
solid bet.

Friday, December 19, 2014

There’s precious little time for our characters in this action
packed finale

The original title of this third installment in the Hobbitserieswas The Hobbit: There and Back Again. I assumed that Warner Brothers
altered the original title because it’s a dangerous one for a movie that is
bordering on been-there-done-that familiarity. Turns out, The Battle of the Five Armies is the more fitting
title for a movie that is just about five armies fighting. Seriously,
there’s very little time for anything else.

The battle is worth your time; the action scenes are the best
in the whole series. But a lot of magic was lost.

It still tops in scope, fantasy storytelling and big-canvas beauty. Yet somehow you can’t quite forget that The Hobbit films never matched up to
Peter Jackson’s Lord of the
Rings trilogy. Perhaps no series could.

What separated them at the beginning, and had such potential for this
series, was the miniature-sized sweetness and heart of the main
characters. Martin Freeman brings more to his hobbit than Elijah Wood did and I developed more fondness for this series' merry band of characters.
There wasn’t much of that stuff in the third installment (and there is way too little
screen time for Bilbo Baggins), but when tragedy threatens these characters we
loved, it is all the more compelling for it.

Amazingly from fantasy master Peter Jackson, the final moments fall very
flat and threaten to make to make the whole Tolkien series feel quite
pointless. I’ll ignore that disappointing end because I sure did enjoy the
ride.

Simply put: A middling Middle Earth installment; go for the
action. This one is only a two hours and 24 minutes investment.

Award potential: Even a few technical award nominations would be a
surprise. It’s not even on the short list for makeup. The Oscars have moved on.

The ten buck review: Worth ten bucks. This battle-centric
film is worth the 3D hassle.

Tuesday, December 9, 2014

The Golden Globes are voted on The Hollywood Foreign press,
which is 90 foreign journalists who choose to live in Southern California — so
who knows what they think. Since Boyhood told me that “life doesn’t give you
bumpers,” I’m gonna try to predict their (often wild) picks anyway. Last year I was 87.5% correct.

The clash of brute and blue blood is an interesting one, but
this is not a Carell comedy.

Foxcatcher
is a new film from Academy Award nominee Bennett Miller, who
directed one of the best sports films of all time (Moneyball). Foxcatcher
tells the story of brothers and Olympic Gold Medal-winning wrestlers Mark (Channing
Tatum) and Dave Schultz (Mark Ruffalo) and their encounter with millionaire
John du Pont (Steve Carell).

The clash of brute and blue blood is an interesting one, but
this is not a Carell comedy. In fact, this is a very dark film. The pacing is
slow and downright creepy.

The performances by all three leads are a knockout. The story
is intriguing but fails with some of the motivations, so I’d give that part a win
by default.

Simply put:Dark sports bio with arresting performances

Award potential: Carell
and Ruffalo will be nominated. Carell’s character is not lovable enough to win over
Redmayne or Keaton.
Potential for Best Film and Original Screenplay nominations too, but this is a “performance
film,” not a director/producer one.

Friday, December 5, 2014

Surprise! The biopic of one of the most brilliant
people in the history of the planet is less about Stephen Hawking's discoveries
and the theory of relativity and more
about the relationships with the
people in his life.

Fellow physicists proclaim, “It’s brilliant,”
or clap to explain to the audience that what he did just mattered. It’s an odd
cop-out for a film about a man who had skills at explaining amazing concepts to
average folks. This month’s Interstellarpulled that off a little better.

But I loved the non-formulatic relationship
story. After seeing the film, I wasn’t surprised to learn that the film was
based on wife Jane Hawking’s memoir. The tone and mood is clearly the
ex-spouses’ story.

This film is full of Hollywood magic and it is one of the best
films of 2014.

Award potential:Oscar
bait. Eddie Redmayne is likely to go all the way to a win for Best Actor; I
forgot he was pulling off an effortless transformation without playing up those contortions. I have no idea how he did that. Felicity Jones is a likely nominee as well.
Expect 4-6 nominations between Best Picture, Actor, Actress, Adapted
Screenplay, Johann
Johansson’s Score and maybe Cinematography.